You know, this blog is rather a diary of sorts. No one reads it except for a few. No one lives the way I do except for a very few. I don’t get zillions of page views a day. So what I say here is mainly for myself. A way to record my thoughts and look back in a few years and see where I was and where I have gone. That said I wanted to vent a little. I’m going to conduct an experiment. Six months from now I am going to reread this post and I will bet you I will be laughing at what happened 2 months ago. I have always said no matter what bad thing or things happen to you, in six months you will be laughing about it. You see, I have a very bad problem. I trust people. I look for the good in people. That’s my downfall. Probably along with being the laziest person on this rock I am one of the most trusting. To an extent. I guess I am a bit out of the ordinary, or perhaps a lot out of the ordinary. I don’t take orders too well. I don’t put up with BS. I don’t compromise and I don’t steal and rip off folks. I don’t shove knives in people’s backs, twist it and toss them overboard halfway to Hawaii. Those that do I try to stay away from as far as possible. I try. But then sometimes every once in a while a faker gets through my radar. A little voice inside me that speaks to me without words tries to warn me but I don’t heed it or sort of ignore it.
Well, about five years ago I met a person that was rather down on his luck. Let’s call this person George. George had a family and wasn’t doing all that well. I remember one night he asked me for $10 so he could buy a chicken dinner at the grocery store for his son. He didn’t even have $10 to buy food. He had sunk that low. Over the next few months we bantered back and forth about new business ideas. We came up with a new business idea and because he was not technically inclined nor did he speak English very well it was up to moi to start things up and get things up to speed. It was a lot of work on my part. I set up everything. I researched everything. I implemented everything. George offered advice from time to time but it was rather like a 10-year-old offering advice to a pilot flying a Learjet.
From the beginning we split the profit. We ran this business on a handshake. (My first mistake) It took quite a while to become profitable but after a year or so the profits started building. I was still doing all the work, more or less from 6am to 6pm while George hung out at his home. According to George he couldn’t really deal with customers due to his poor command of English and could not handle the technical details because he did not know how to set up the technical part of the business.
Over time the business grew and that’s actually what allowed moi to go on this road trip back in February 2015. Once the business took off and was placed on autopilot I could run the business from my trusty laptop.
Over the last year and a half I noticed George was spending more and more of his profits while I was banking most of mine. It got to the point a year ago that he started spending my profits. I called him on it and he said don’t worry, it’s temporary. Each month he would spend his share and more and more of mine. But he kept saying don’t worry, don’t be paranoid, it was just temporary. A year ago he had reached the point where he had spent a mid 5 figure amount of my share of the profits. I called him on it then and for a few months he spent a tad less per month but at that rate it would take 3 years or more to pay me back. Whatever. That silent voice in my head goes off again and I don’t listen, well I started listening a little better but I was not that concerned too much. This summer (2016) I started getting really bad vibes about the situation. That silent voice again. This time I listened. I told George if he cannot pay me back then it would be best to split the business and he could do whatever he wanted with his half and he could spend whatever he wanted with his half and I would be free to run my half as I see fit. At this point George realized I wanted to dissolve our handshake partnership. Well, over the next couple months he was harder to reach and his spending habits were as high or higher than ever. The silent voice in my head was speaking to me more and more. I was getting really bad vibes but once again George said not to worry. Can you guess what is about to happen?
About two months ago early one morning I get a skype message from our team leader saying he cannot login to any of our accounts. That’s weird I thought. I try myself and I cannot get into any of our accounts. I called one of the accounts up and they told me the admin password had been changed by the “owner”. There’s nothing they can do. I tried calling George, no answer. I must have called him over 100 times that day, no answer. In hindsight I sorta figured things were heading downhill about 2 months before the lockout when he actually hung up the phone on me when I was talking to him. I took measures then to try to protect myself by backing up all our business data. But still I had no idea what was ahead.
Turns out about 2 days later after the lockout he texted me a phone number to call. He never picked up his phone to speak with me but he did finally text some number to call. Guess whose number? It was his lawyer. Can you believe it? George locked me out of all our business accounts and now he was going to steal my half of our business and steal my monthly share of the profits. And he did. According to George and his lawyer it is now his business because George’s wife’s name was on most of the business startup documents due to tax reasons. (My second big mistake) So now technically it was George’s business even though I did 99.9% of all the work over the last five years and I set up 100% of the business myself due to George’s poor language skills and poor technical skills.
After this happened I had the opportunity to speak to many people in George’s past that all had a similar tale. He was a MF that ripped them off too. The largest amount was for over 100K yet George drove a beat up ten-year old car. Kinda makes you wonder what he did with all the money. A ton of people came forward and gave me the real 411 on George.
Thankfully I took action in mid 2016 to somewhat protect myself. It could have been a lot worse. But still, this guy that I loaned $10 to buy a chicken dinner for his son 5 years ago comes full circle 5 years later and shoves a knife in my back, twists it and tosses me overboard halfway to Hawaii and sails off in our boat while laughing at me how stupid I was.
Well George, we will see who has the last laugh. In six months I will return and post an update on this story and like I have always said I am sure I will be laughing at the situation. To be honest I’m still in shock as I write this but time heals all wounds. I know the business like the back of my hand. It will take time to start it again from the beginning but if that is what I have to do I will do it.
There is so much more to this story, what I wrote is rather the tip of the iceberg. What I learned is you have to listen to that little voice in your head that speaks to you in the language without words. Call it whatever you want to call it. Things could have been a whole lot worse that day he locked me out but I had been preparing for something like this. The final straw was when he hung up on me about 2 months before he locked me out of all our business accounts. Hey! at least he knows how to login to accounts and change admin passwords.
So, in six months I will be back with an update on this story. Will I be laughing? I think so. I don’t think George ever read The Count Of Monte Christo.
Let’s meet up around May 31st 2017 and see.
L
Somewhere In New Mexico
“Something is about to happen. Something very wonderful.”
This post was composed under the magical influence of Peaceful Easy Feeling by The Eagles